National Grid energy audit

Money goes in, heat leaks out
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kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

National Grid energy audit

Post by kevm14 »

After booking the free energy audit months ago, they finally called to make a near-term appointment. Not sure how many contractors National Grid hires to do these, but ours was from RISE Engineering out of Cranston. I was not home for the audit. According to my wife, they did not pressurize or depressurize the house, which disappointed me. Jamie also claims he drilled a hole in some closet to determine the state of wall insulation, if any. I can't find any evidence of holes but he found cellulose insulation (which was obvious by what was in my attic before I added those rows of batts).

Determinations were made in the following areas:
- Home air leakage. No need to perform air sealing.
- Attic insulation. Apparently he liked my batts because there is no need to add more insulation.
- Attic ventilation. Adequate and meets/exceeds building code requirements.
- Wall insulation. Says it is insulated with cellulose. No more is required. This part I disagree with as the walls are very cold in the winter. I think there are other products (like expanding foam) that would do a much better job.
- Basement perimeter joist. He wants 140 linear feet of R-19 unfaced fiberglass insulation all along the edge of the basement ceiling area. Needs to contact sill and floor above. It quotes an installed cost of $245, says there is $0 incentive available (not sure why) but hilariously also quotes an $18/hr energy savings. It then computes a payback of 14 years.
- Doors. Doors are in good condition and no need to do anything.
- Windows. Windows are in good condition and no major recommendations. The fitment of my windows in my office aren't perfect (uneven gaps along the frame) but maybe that's ok. What I have noticed, though, is slight air leakage in the winter on the plastic pop-out tabs that keep the window from being opened past a certain amount (for security). 3 of the 4 tabs are broken on my two windows in this room, so that's an air leak. I attempted to fill with caulk years ago but it may need to be re-done. He apparently didn't notice this.

So my simple ranch is basically energy efficient, for what it is. I already knew this.

Onto mechanical systems.
- Heating. We COULD replace with a modern high efficiency furnace. But what he told my wife is the payback is not worth it at all. Quoted cost is $7,500 which seems literally twice what I would have expected, with a meager $300 available rebate. Estimated energy savings is $350/yr for a very uninteresting 20+ year payback. So my early 90s furnace probably should stay unless the replacement cost comes down substantially.
- Thermostats. Recommends a programmable thermostat. Apparently the rebates for these are very high and I can get one installed for $10 total, which is obviously much cheaper than I could even buy the part for.
- Water heater. I have a gas fired 50 gal tank that I installed a few years ago, and it's pretty well insulated. Could go with an on-demand at $2000. Minus a $400 rebate, for a net cost of $1600, which isn't too bad. 7 year payback is at least in the ballpark of being practical. But I'll probably not do anything because this water heater is fairly new.
- A/C. This is the only real mechanical recommendation. My system is recommended for replacement due to efficiency. Newer systems are apparently much more efficient. Mine is 10 SEER and current units run in the 14.5+ SEER range. Only "typical" installed costs are listed, and it ranges from $3,500 to $7,500 depending on size. No rebate is listed and no payback is listed. Great.

Appliances.
- Refrigerator. My terrible/cheap top/bottom fridge is apparently considered energy efficient so nothing to do here. Sigh.

So that was kind of a bust. Except for one thing. Free light bulbs! That's right. We got no fewer than 20 free light bulbs. Let me break it down.

Kitchen: We have 5 dimmable floods and I already replaced 1 with an LED flood. So he added 4 new dimmable CFL floods.
Living room: We have 4 dimmable floods but he couldn't get to one so we got 3 dimmable CFL floods. Sigh. Jamie says he was supposed to leave the 4th but must have forgotten.
Bathroom: 3 dimmable floods replaced with 3 dimmable CFL floods.
These are the floods.
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So 10 free ones. 16W replaces the 65W incandescents. Roughly 1/4 the electricity usage. Payback: immediately. They were free.

The solid state dimmer in my bathroom works better with them than the older rheostat-type dimmers in my living room and kitchen. So I may have to replace those. The dimmability is not impressive in those spaces. Even worse, when dim, they apparently throw off all kinds of IR-spectrum junk. It makes the IR receiver on my HTPC blink constantly, though no functionality seems to be affected. On full brightness I don't see the issue. Also, one of the bulbs in the kitchen has an awful warmup time. Not sure what I will do about this, if anything. Could put it back to incandescent and not use it much, or switch to LED. Or nothing.

Impressively, the other 10 free bulbs are of the LED type.

Dining room: he replaced my 6 40W chandelier bulbs with 5W LED bulbs, which 8x less electricity. I am impressed here. They dim well and are 2700K which is great.
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Finally, the bedrooms. He replaced CFL bulbs on 4 lamps with LED bulbs. I think they use about 2/3rds the power of the old CFLs. Huge bonus: no more shitty warmup time on our main bedroom lamp.
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Particularly impressive was he left all our old bulbs. I would have definitely assumed part of the deal was to take the old incandescent bulbs.

Pile of free stuff, including another smart strip:
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